Dairy farmers threatened with action over pollution

Canterbury regional council Environment Canterbury (ECan) is threatening further legal action against dairy farmers who fail to control stock effluent.

ECan's latest report on dairy shed effluent discharges, released this week, shows no improvement on last year's results, with fewer than half the 541 farms surveyed fully compliant with their discharge consent conditions.

Only 48 per cent of farms were fully compliant, compared with 52 per cent for the 2004-05 survey and 61 per cent for the 2003-04 period.

"If we take out technical breaches, only 55 per cent of dairy sheds would have been fully complying on first visit from an ECan member," council regulation overview committee chairman Angus McKay said.

"This is still not good enough."

Mr McKay said technical non-compliance did not cause any adverse environmental effects and included exceeding the permitted volume of raw effluent.

Mr Angus said 74 dairy sheds which were found to be fully compliant with their consents and meeting their effluent conditions in the three previous seasons were not included in the latest survey.

Because of this the statistics could not be strictly compared year-on-year. The fully compliant farms were located from the Rakaia River, in Mid-Canterbury, south to the Waitaki River.

Even though ECan couldn't directly compare this season's survey to last season, recent results still showed there was "significant non-compliance of around 19 per cent", Mr Angus said.

"As a result ECan will be monitoring all dairy discharges this coming season and unless there is significant improvement, ECan will take more legal action," he said.

ECan would also raise its concerns with industry and farming groups.

"In particular, we will be talking to Fonterra as part of the clean streams accord," Mr Angus said.

Environmental lobby group Fish and Game today labelled the Canterbury results and similar findings from Waikato as disappointing.

Fish and Game New Zealand director Bryce Johnson said the surveys highlighted the "cavalier attitude" some dairy farmers had toward the environment.

"The ongoing decrease in compliance rates since 2003 is very disturbing," Mr Johnson said.

"Despite clear rules for their effluent discharge consents, a number of farmers continue to thumb their nose at both our already threatened environment and the public that enjoy it."

- NZPA